It should have been a happy time for James and Louise watching their only son grow up into a handsome man full of athletic ability and promise.

2016 had been their year. Medal after medal at the Rio Olympics and all gold made them the nations sporting golden couple and household names. They came back to Great Britain full of hope for the future, proud of what they had achieved for the nation but most of all looking forward to getting married and starting a family.

Their wedding was a stylish but low key event with family and close friends. Of course Ok were there to photograph it all and let the celebrity worshippers see what they had missed or could copy for their own wedding in full eye blinding colour over 10 pages. Weddings don’t just pay for themselves after all and it would be good to show the general public they were just an ordinary working class family after all.

And 9 months after their wedding on that warm September day their first child as born a boy…and they called him Kevin. Now there’s nothing wrong with Kevin as a name but usually celebrity couples prefer more unorthodox names such as prunus, mostaza or cacao. But James and Louise once again choose to remain close to their working class roots and called him Kevin.

They sent him to the local primary and secondary schools where they hoped he would learn to be tough and develop into a strong, multi-talented sportsman with a mentality that could crush Mount Everest a cast iron will that could crush planets and a fearless desire to not only win but crush whole cities in they got in his sporting path.

And so twenty years later as they began to think about Kevin’s 21st birthday party they looked at him as he covered the entire £10,000 leather sofa they had bought him with his vast frame. Had they been too soft on him? Should they have made him work for money instead of giving it away so freely? Maybe they should have taken him cycling and made him work for glory and not just assume he would have the unbelievable will to win that they possessed.

Yes, Kevin lay on his extra-large sofa, 20st of fat watching day time television eating his third pizza of the day, spilling a large cola down the valley that divided his chest as another fart somehow escaped from between his mountainous butt cheeks followed swiftly by a belch that could have destroyed any island in its path had Kevin been bothered enough to get off the sofa and do so.

James and Louise looked on and wondered once again how their genes and DNA could have produced something so different to them and not the ultimate sporting superstar they had both hoped for. They still loved Kevin of course and catered for his every whim but they wished he had turned out different. More like his sister Gabby who was fast developing into one of the top cyclists in the world already at the age of eighteen.

They looked at each other lovingly and realised it was too late to change Kevin and his annoying bad habits and they would have to accept him for who he was and love him all the same. ‘Another pizza’ asked James? ‘Yes please’ replied Kevin. ‘I’ll get you another cola’ piped up Louise. ‘Thanks mum’ Kevin said without looking up from the sofa. ‘Love you both’, ‘Love you too son’ James and Louise said in unison with a sly smile on their faces.

from the first light of the flickering filamentto the soiling of that clean white nappyplaying with toys, learning the rules of lifethat scary first day with other frightened kidsand the years of listening and learning that followto end up cast into a world of love and hatehunting for jobs to help me build a lifedrinking in haunts to help me forget i livemeeting my first and only true loverepopulating the planet with my seedwatching them grow into miniature versions of meas they repeat the process of life that i have been throughwe grow old together and head towardsthe unavoidable fate that besets all humanityleaving behind all that we know and lovethese are the memories of life i have accumulatedrefuse festering in the dustbin of my mind

It’s not often I write a poem for an occasion but this Remembrance Sunday is a very special day because it is 100 years since the start of World War 1. I have written a poem to commemorate all the soldier’s who fought in WW1 and all subsequent wars too. I hope you get something from it.